Gianna Brielle Perez (born February 2000), known professionally as Gigi Perez or simply Gigi, is an American singer-songwriter. Born in New Jersey and raised in Florida, she went viral on TikTok for her songs “Celene” and “Sometimes (Backwood)” and spent a period signed to Interscope Records, on which she released the 2023 EP How to Catch a Falling Knife. After leaving the label, she released “Sailor Song”, which charted on the UK singles chart and Billboard Hot 100. She has also supported Coldplay on their Music of the Spheres World Tour, Noah Cyrus on her The Hardest Part Tour, and D4vd on his The Root of It All Tour.
Life and career
Gianna Brielle Perez was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida. : 0:49 She is a lesbian and spent a year at a comprehensive before moving to a Christian school. : 8:39 She began writing songs aged fifteen and began releasing music in 2018 while in high school as part of the band Wendy Lane. Perez attended Berklee College of Music but left due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. She had an older sister, Celene, who died in July 2020, shortly after which her partner broke up with her. : 29:34 To cope with her grief, she began uploading videos to TikTok to kill time. She went viral in early 2021 after releasing “Celene” and then “Sometimes (Backwood)”, both of which went viral on TikTok, prompting Interscope Records to sign her.
Perez released a further single, “The Man”, in June 2022, a track about expectations faced by men. She supported Coldplay on their Music of the Spheres World Tour later that month at their Florida stadium show. She has stated in interviews to have received the offer to do so on her 22nd birthday and in February 2022. She then released “When She Smiles”, a song about a toxic relationship inspired by Ariana Grande, Imogen Heap, and “When Jamie Smiles” from the Ryan Reynolds film Just Friends, and “Glue”, a track written in late 2020 about clinging to a relationship after bereavement.
In October 2022, she supported Noah Cyrus on her The Hardest Part Tour and released “Figurines”. In February 2023, she supported D4vd on his The Root of It All Tour. In March, by which time she was based in Brooklyn, she released “Sally” and announced an EP, How to Catch a Falling Knife, which comprised eight songs composed three years earlier. The EP took its title from the stock market term “never try to catch a falling knife”, as she felt it represented what she had put into the project, and was released in April 2023 alongside a music video for focus track “Kill for You”.
In March 2024, after being released from Interscope Records, she released “Normalcy”, a queer love song she had first promoted in December 2022 on TikTok; she followed this a month later with “Please Be Rude”. In July 2024, she released the single “Sailor Song”, an acoustic queer ballad about a woman who looked like Anne Hathaway. The track went viral on TikTok and became her first entry on the UK singles chart and the Billboard Hot 100. Some far-right conservative Christian communities complained about the line “I don’t believe in God, but I believe that you’re my saviour,” prompting Perez to remind her followers that her songwriting was “not a democracy”.
GIGI PEREZ URL LINKS:
Website: https://gigiperezmusic.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gigi4perez
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gigi4perez
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gigi4perez
Facebook:#
X: https://www.x.com/geeguscrust